Linux – Move files from subdirectories into single directory and prefix original directory name

bashlinuxmvUbuntu

I have a directory structure like this:

./a/1.png
./a/2.png
./a/3.png
./b/1.png
./b/2.png
./b/3.png
./c/1.png
...

And I want to take all the files in the subdirectories and move them to a new directory so their names are something like

../dest/a_1.png
../dest/a_2.png
../dest/a_3.png
../dest/b_1.png
../dest/b_2.png
../dest/b_3.png
../dest/c_1.png
...

The closest I've been able to find without writing a script to do it file by file is to use find with the --backup=numbered option which would condense my files to a single directory but would end up losing the directory context from the filename.

Is there a succinct way to accomplish this?

Best Answer

With Perl's standalone rename command:

rename -n 's|/|_|; s|^|dest/|' */*.png

Output:

a/1.png renamed as dest/a_1.png
a/2.png renamed as dest/a_2.png
a/3.png renamed as dest/a_3.png
b/1.png renamed as dest/b_1.png
b/2.png renamed as dest/b_2.png
b/3.png renamed as dest/b_3.png
c/1.png renamed as dest/c_1.png

If everything looks fine, remove option -n.

Related Solutions

Move all files from subdirectories to current directory

You can also use the -mindepth option:

find . -type f -mindepth 2 -exec mv -i -- {} . \;

(Together with -maxdepth you could also limit the hierarchy levels from which to collect the files.)

I used mv -i (“interactive”) to make mv ask before overwriting files. With a lot of subdirectories, there may be name clashes you'd like to be warned about.

The -- option stops option processing, so mv doesn't get confused by filenames starting with a hyphen.

Clean up the whole bunch of empty subdirectories with

find . -depth -mindepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;

Linux – rename all jpeg files sequentially in all nested subfolders and move to a new folder

With Larry Wall's rename/prename(*) you can easily "flatten" the structure:

cd mainfolder
rename -n 's:/:-:g' */*/*.jpg

This will move subfolder1/0001.jpg to subfolder1-0001.jpg (in mainfolder) because rename edits the whole input path and then does the equivalent of mv using source and edited names.

g in the edit means to replace all occurrences, useful if you have more than one level of subdirectories.
-n just shows what it would do without doing anything
remove or replace by -v for the actual action.
by default no overwrite can happen (you need a -f) but normally since this includes subdirectories in the names you shouldn't have name clashes anyway.
once everything is in mainfolder, it is easy to do a bulk move elsewhere if needed.
if the files are in various levels of nesting, use shopt -s globstar and use ** to denote all levels:
```
rename s:/:-:g **/*.jpg
```

For instance:

Starting with

.
├── sub1
│   ├── subsub1
│   │   ├── 001.jpg
│   │   ├── 002.jpg
│   │   └── 003.jpg
│   └── subsub2
│       ├── 001.jpg
│       ├── 002.jpg
│       └── 003.jpg
└── sub2
    ├── subsub1
    │   ├── 001.jpg
    │   ├── 002.jpg
    │   └── 003.jpg
    └── subsub2
        ├── 001.jpg
        ├── 002.jpg
        └── 003.jpg

Execute:

rename s:/:-:g */*/*.jpg

This results in:

.
├── sub1
│   ├── subsub1
│   └── subsub2
├── sub1-subsub1-001.jpg
├── sub1-subsub1-002.jpg
├── sub1-subsub1-003.jpg
├── sub1-subsub2-001.jpg
├── sub1-subsub2-002.jpg
├── sub1-subsub2-003.jpg
├── sub2
│   ├── subsub1
│   └── subsub2
├── sub2-subsub1-001.jpg
├── sub2-subsub1-002.jpg
├── sub2-subsub1-003.jpg
├── sub2-subsub2-001.jpg
├── sub2-subsub2-002.jpg
└── sub2-subsub2-003.jpg

And you can get rid of the subdirectories using

rm -r sub*/

(final slash is important! it restricts the match to directories)

So finally:

.
├── sub1-subsub1-001.jpg
├── sub1-subsub1-002.jpg
├── sub1-subsub1-003.jpg
├── sub1-subsub2-001.jpg
├── sub1-subsub2-002.jpg
├── sub1-subsub2-003.jpg
├── sub2-subsub1-001.jpg
├── sub2-subsub1-002.jpg
├── sub2-subsub1-003.jpg
├── sub2-subsub2-001.jpg
├── sub2-subsub2-002.jpg
└── sub2-subsub2-003.jpg

If you have a huge collection of files, you cannot process in one call because the file expansion of **/*.jpg will generate a list which is too long (/bin/sh: 1: rename: Argument list too long`). So you have to split the work, for instance by calling rename once by directory:

shopt -s globstar 
for d in **/; do rename s:/:-:g "$d"*.jpg; done

(the / in '**/' is important, it restricts the expansion to directories)

If you still get the Argument list too long message then you have a directory with very many files :) You just have to find a way to split the work, for instance:

for f in path/to/hugedir/A*;jpg; do rename s:/:-:g "$d"*.jpg; done
for f in path/to/hugedir/B*;jpg; do rename s:/:-:g "$d"*.jpg; done
[... etc ...]

If this is still too big and or you want to be blunt, you can also call rename once for each file:

shopt -s globstar 
for f in **/*.jpg; do rename s:/:-:g "$f"; done

(this will work because here the expansion of "**/*.jpg" is just a variable in your shell, and not the list of arguments to a command).

PS: bash assumed here, if you are putting this in a script, make sure the "shebang" is /bin/bash, on some systems sh is a lightweight shell (dash) that doesn't support globstar.

(*) name varies depending on distro, rename for Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives, and IIRC prename on RedHat and derivatives.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Move all files from subdirectories to current directory

Linux – rename all jpeg files sequentially in all nested subfolders and move to a new folder

Related Question